Posts Tagged I r teh fail

Everyone has weaknesses in the way they play. I have a myriad of them, but after many years of raiding, I’ve learned how to best counter myself.

I am a creature of habit. Reflexes are my way of forming mental filters and handling complex fights. Once I figure out the rhythm of a fight, I can devote my full attention to doing my best. It’s not unlike learning to drive–at first it’s all OMG THERE’S SO MANY THINGS TO REMEMBER but it becomes second nature before long. I must master the individual layers before I can excel at the whole.

This means that when things change too much I’m the derpiest of derps.I’m used to working like this, and it’s one reason why I seldom pugged raids even when I had the time. The constants of a guild raid week in and week out were better for me. I’m self-aware enough to not court failure more than I must. I struggled massively with my guild’s Rags attempts because I only raid every other week, and with two different raid leaders, the strat would literally be different every single time I went. I’ve never felt so unsure of myself as when I was failing left and right on Rags. Thankfully that’s not a situation that comes up much, and after I’ve done a fight the same way a few times, I’m okay. I just need my crutches in place.

There’s a reason I was only in a “top 5 on the server” guild in Vanilla. In 40 mans, who really notices 1 of 7 holy paladins dying? NO ONE.

Suffer from left/right confusion? I know of many people who rely on post-it notes to not only remind them which way is which, but of other assignments as well. I sketch things out on paper on my desk sometimes (ex: THIS SON, dumbface) as a visual reminder.

I couldn’t get through life as a responsible adult without post-it notes.

What are your personal weaknesses, and how do you cope? Are you a perpetual keyboard turner that remains extra aware of stuff on the floor? Did you used to be a paladin tank who had to install an ad-on to yell when you didn’t have RF up?

Don’t mock me for writing this strat. The Elevator Boss has claimed many lives, including several members of SiB. It may have even claimed some of them more than once.

Tips and Tricks:

As I discovered personally, the engineer’s habit of reaching for his parachute in times of crisis will not serve you well here. While it’s true you will not splatter on the ground, you will slowly…casually…glide right into the lava. Where you will die. And you will not be able to be rezzed by a snickering guildie and you will have to run your arse right back into the instance to brave the elevator again. I can only imagine that levitate or slowfall will have the same result without perfect timing.

Trying to heroic leap off the elevator early to show off how awesome you are will, more often than not, result in you making an awesome blood smear. Right Pix?

For the highest chance of not dying, stop on the edge of the elevator platform and wait patiently. Do not tab out–this is not a dawdling elevator. By the time you belatedly look over from your 2nd monitor and 4chan to realize that it’s there, you will wander off the edge only to find that it has already left. Wait and run onto the platform as soon as you see it, especially if you’re laggy.

Levitating someone else to make them float into the lava pit/splatter is cruel. Hilarious, but cruel. Lifegrip can also be abused in amusing ways, proving that priests are OP and need to be nerfed.

Someone else with more forethought than I was kind enough to provide images for this tough boss encounter! You can find them here. Or here, here, and here if the WoW forums are blocked but you can see imageshack.

One time we were doing ToC25, and my little sister was killed by Icehowl’s charge. I openly mocked her, as was my sisterly duty. The very next time Icehowl charged, I died to it.

Did I learn from this karmic retribution?

Aww HELL no.

Last night we were clearing our way to Rotface, and we pulled one of the puppies. The puppies are always a bitch for reasosn unknown…no wait, I do know. We’re the guild that wipes on Gunship while one shotting everything else in Lower Spire-of COURSE the mini bosses are hard. Anyway. I see a tell-tale fail angel and teasingly tell the priest in question, Oasic, to Desperate Prayer more.

Normally, Monday is Throw Screenshots At The Blog Day, but I didn’t get around to properly editing the screenies, so today…you get the Adventures of the Fail Tree.

My baby druid only has 4 buttons. A HoT, a smallish heal thingy with another HoT, Swiftmend, and Healing Touch. HT has quickly become equated with Greater Heal in my mind-it’s a thing that I try not to cast too often, because it’s slow as fuck. Big, but slow. The adjustment part comes from not having a little heal to spam in its place-it became a game of wiggling around and wondering if Swiftmend would come off CD in time. Sometimes the mage died. Sorry, mage. AoE less?

I feel comfortable enough healing 5 mans by now, but I have discovered a massive problem with playing a tree. See, I throw my HoTs on the tank and then I…wait. During those long seconds of waiting I get distracted-by my cat, my party chat, or by guild chat discussing whether or not spit is a good enough lube for anal sex.

No really, we had that discussion. I screen shotted it and everything!

Anyway.

So I get distracted, and I start typing, right? Standing there…typing…not following the group. And then the tank runs ahead and pulls another 2-3 packs of mobs, and I go OH SHIT, and I don’t have penance to make up for my lollygagging anymore so…SPLAT goes the tank.

Because I was typing.

Ahem.

I think that maybe I need a Swiftmend maco of Amber Wasn’t Paying Attention, because this is going to be a long haul to 80…

/hots

/sees something shiny

/wanders off

(To explain the title, aside from the obvious: my poor little druid was dubbed Psychiatree. Because I need some, see, after having that many healers…)

That I do, that I do. But quite frankly, I suck at shadow. I didn’t always, of course-in Ulduar I used to be, if not uber, at least not fail. If we 2 healed something I did acceptable DPS. If we did heroics, I beat the damn tank in damage.

I…can’t even do that anymore. I somehow got shucked into a random heroic as DPS last night (wut?!) and I…was…below the tank. Not DPS wise, no (aoe lol), but in damage done, yes. I didn’t even break 3k. What the hell. When we tried to 2 heal Saurfang, I went shadow because previously I had the strongest dual-spec of the present healers and…

…no. Just, no. Again, in a RAID, not breaking 3k. I swapped in my hunter and could at least do 3.5k. My lesser geared BM hunter can beat my priest.

Yes.

So.

Until I can find some way to fix things (not enough haste? Too much else lost in trying to gain haste? Too much cross over gear from disc? I just suck at playing?) I’ve officially unchecked the DPS box.

And I’m a sad panda.

:(

Mind seeeeaaaar.

In GOOD news, the sort that makes me warm and fuzzy inside, my guildies shoved gear at me in ToC despite fail!rolls. I have the nifty offhand (a nice upgrade from my Ulduar 10 piece), and two trophys I now need to…farm badges for. XD Maybe some day I don’t be the worst geared priest (main) in the guild. \o/

Ah, it’s that time again. Raid attendence drops, people stop paying attention, and all of a sudden we’re wiping on farm content.

Freya defeated us again last night, which has me wanting to cry in both sadness and anger. It’s Freya, for fuck’s sake. In Ulduar. She’s a keeper that we used to be able to down regularly. I don’t know where everyone’s head was, but if the trash wipes didn’t clue me in, a Freya pull by someone distracted by the TV should have. I want to kill Yoggy, people. :(

It’s a struggle for me, internally. I’m telling myself that it’s just a natural lull, the kind that BoO has survived over and over. Then there’s the part of my brain that is screaming YOU ARE THE MOST TERRIBLE GM EVER, and I hate that part. I’m flailing at my support network on a regular basis (I love you guys).

I GM’d once before, in BC. We had a cozy little group of friends, barely enough to scrape together a Kara. Then one day my co-GM and one of our precious healers transferred off server without warning, and I’m afraid I was rather gutted after that and the guild slowly dwindled away. Gwuh. Will not repeat.

I’ve got an officer who is perpetually MIA…no, actually, two officers who are perpeutally MIA, though one of them at least occassionaly shows up and leads an off night raid. Cranky Tank is on that wavering age of burn out and /game quit…again. Of the other three officers, one is the former GM and lord knows where his mind is…and the other two are also sort of wavering uncertainly in burn out/bored land. In other words, I’m really afraid to lean on anybody, and the number of people I feel I can count on is smaller than our number of officers.

Of course this just means that I’ll actually be leaning on the people who currently keep me raiding, officer or not. Myss. Oasic. Celaeno. Pyxy. Kyr. Rivyn. Atropus. Frost. All of you who joke around and generally make my nights amusing.

I have a couple of angry rants saved up, but I’m almost afraid to voice them. Perhaps tomorrow will be Pull Your Head Out Of Your Asses Lecture Day, where I talk about things like continuing to stare at the TV and not the computer when your GM on vent is going “EVERYONE BACK UP BACK UP BACK OH GOD THE BOSS PULLED” is pretty damn fail.

To cap the fail, I missed taming Loque by like…a minute. Then I hopped on my warrior and found Skoll’s corpse. Bwuh. Sad BM hunter is sad. /pokemons

And theoretically, on rare occasions, we also have an @Orithea! On less rare and more wordy occasions, we also have a James. Who does not have a Twitter because he is fail? Anyway, there had to be some bubbles in this blog somewhere.